The Bluestocking 339: Crypto and Chappell

Yes, I'm on the campaign trail

Happy Friday!

And hello from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, where I am currently soaking up the election atmosphere in possibly the most crucial swing state in the presidential race. What that means in practice: lots of billboards, lawn signs and TV adverts for both candidates. (Incidentally, one of the most discomfiting trends, as someone who is publicly gender-critical, is how that issue has been hijacked by the Republican party and presented in the crudest possible terms. One Republican ad tells voters: “Kamala’s for they/them, President Trump is for you.”)

On Wednesday, I drove through Amish country—including the town of Intercourse, because I am a child—to Reading, PA, where Trump held a rally. For what it’s worth, the arena was quite compact and very much not full, although he can still attract an extremely engaged crowd. The sheer amount of slogans on display was extraordinary: my favourite was a guy in a vest that read: MAKE ANABOLICS GREAT AGAIN. One of the mysteries of MAGA is that I have always found Americans to be, in person and outside the big cities, an extremely courteous people. Going to a Trump rally seems to give them permission to be gratuitously mean.

There are a whole load of guys who go to every Trump rally, and even get name-checked from the stage: one is called “Front Row Joe” and another “Mr Wall”, because he has a suit that looks like it’s made out of bricks. (This is a country that loves a theme: I went to a cafe that was so heavily decorated with pumpkins that it was like being inside a Yankee Candle.)

One of the rally regulars, “Uncle Sam,” even did a mock theatrical walkout when Trump urged everyone to leave and register to vote:

This weekend, I’m off to Pittsburgh, in the western side of the state, next to Ohio. Anyone who’s from there/been there and has tips, do let me know!

Helen

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Silicon Valley, America’s New Lobbying Monster (New Yorker)

The second part of Lehane’s strategy was to use large amounts of money to pressure San Francisco politicians. The company brought on hundreds of canvassers to knock on the doors of two hundred and eighty-five thousand people—roughly a third of the city’s population—and urge them to contact their local elected officials and say that opposing Airbnb was the equivalent of attacking innovation, economic independence, and America’s ideals. The relentless campaign posed a clear threat to the city’s Board of Supervisors: if an official supported Proposition F, Airbnb might encourage someone to run against him or her. “We said the quiet part out loud,” a campaign staffer said. “The goal was intimidation, to let everyone know that if they fuck with us they’ll regret it.” In all, Airbnb spent eight million dollars on the campaign, roughly ten times as much as all of Proposition F’s supporters combined. “It was the most ridiculous campaign I’ve ever worked on,” the staffer told me. “It was so over the top, so extreme. You shouldn’t be able to spend that much on a municipal election.” That said, the staffer loved her time at Airbnb: “It was the most money I’d ever earned working in politics.”

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This one paragraph pretty much explains why American politics is screwed.

The New Yorker’s Charles Duhigg traces some of the biggest and brashest Silicon Valley lobbying campaigns, including AirBnB in San Francisco (above) and the new push by crypto investors to nuke any politician who tries to regulate the sector. (Let me shock you: Donald Trump and sons have backed a crypto business, just weeks before the election, which would be the most red-flaggish enterprise they’re involved in if they weren’t also selling suspicious $100,000 watches.) The crypto industry has set aside more than a hundred million dollars to influence downballot races this election cycle: “Its donations to political candidates are on par with those of the oil-and-gas industry, the pharmaceutical industry, and labor unions.”

The piece also contains this incredible vignette from a crypto conference in Nashville, where the former president was speaking: “When Trump gave a speech before a standing-room-only crowd in orange wigs and ‘Make Bitcoin Great Again’ hats, he pledged, ‘On Day One, I will fire Gary Gensler’—the S.E.C. head. This prompted a standing ovation and choruses of pro-Trump chants. A man standing near me FaceTimed his wife and insisted that she watch the speech, even though she was in the delivery room where their grandchild was being born.”

Oh, and as a bonus, the main lobbyist in this piece—the one who developed the AirBnB strategy—is now working for . . . . OpenAI.

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We only learnt of our son’s secret online life when he died at 20 (The Times, £)

The years pass. Mats’ 20th birthday comes and goes. He begins to write a blog about his life and condition as his body seems to become smaller and more fragile by the day. In November 2014, he is admitted to hospital with respiratory problems. It is not the first time this has happened and, though these episodesare fraught, he has always returned home after several days of intensive care. This time, however, the Steens are roused by a telephone call not long after they have gone to bed for the night.

“It was the hospital,” Robert says. “They said, ‘We think you should get in your car and hurry here now.’ So we threw ourselves in the car. We had never driven so fast through Oslo, but it was at night, so the streets were quiet.” Robert and Trude flew into the hospital at 12.14am, desperate to see their child. “We were exactly 14 minutes late. He had died at midnight.” The feeling, he says, was “complete emptiness. What had filled our lives, for better or worse, physically, mentally, practically, was now over. It had come to an end.”

Their grief is deepened by the knowledge that their son had lived a small, discreet life of little real consequence. He had made no mark on the world or on the lives of anyone outside his immediate family. Mats had never known romantic love or lasting friendship, or the feeling of having made a meaningful contribution to society. They log in to his blog so they can post a message letting his followers know that he has died. And then they sit together on the sofa, unable to sleep, unable to do anything.

Then something rouses them. It is an email from a stranger, expressing their sorrow at Mats’ death. It is quickly followed by another email from another stranger, eulogising their son. The messages continue, a trickle becoming a flood as people convey their condolences and write paragraph after paragraph about Mats.

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Warning: you will cry if you read this story about a boy with progressive muscular dystrophy who couldn’t move much, and so spent all his time in World of Warcraft. Then, after he died, his parents found out how rich his online life had been, and how many people from his guild remembered him.

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Bluestocking recommends: Every roadtrip needs a soundtrack, and mine has been Chappell Roan’s The Rise and Fall of A Midwest Princess. (Only downside: her range is far too high to make singing along in the car possible.) Roan exploded in popularity this year with her single “Good Luck, Babe,” an imagined version of what her life would be like if she continued to deny her sexuality. That’s a banger, as is “Pink Pony Club,” about leaving Tennessee to be a dancer in LA; and “Casual,” about how intense lesbian relationships can get extremely quickly.

Roan has not enjoyed her swift ascension to superstardom, and I slightly wonder if The Rise and Fall of A Midwest Princess is the one of those single, pure albums that an artist makes and can never quite recapture. Still, even if Roan doesn’t produce anything else as good, I can’t think of a better time for young female solo artists: Olivia Rodrigo (I long for a Radiohead cover of “Vampire”); Billie Eilish; Sabrina Carpenter; Charli XCX; and of course, the Don herself, Taylor Swift. We need a serious conversation about why men aren’t any good at making music¹.

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Quick Links

1. A geography quiz which shows you UK outlines and you have to guess the local authority etc. Blame Alan B for the tip.

2. It’s wild to me that some American officials watched an old Michael Portillo documentary about the death penalty—which concluded that all the methods then in use were inhumane, and suggested that hypoxia was preferable, and then brought in nitrogen-based executions in Alabama. These appear to be extremely gruesome indeed; the guy they just killed was thrashing around. I take the view that if red-state governors want to posture about how macho they are by enthusiastically endorsing the death penalty, they should be forced to shoot someone in the head personally to prove it (Bolts Mag).

3. “On my way home from exercise, feeling sweaty and unkempt in my leggings and T-shirt, another man approached me for a selfie. Again, I thanked him for liking my music, but politely refused. Later he appeared on social media telling everyone that I was a bitch, and describing exactly where he had seen me, suggesting it might be a regular haunt of mine.” Tracey Thorn has been famous for four decades. But only recently has she encountered rude, entitled fans. Has the nature of fandom changed? (New Statesman)

4. Plug alert: I went on Adam Buxton’s podcast in the summer and we talked about the gender wars and Ozempic. Fair to say I’ve had grief on both sides for this one.

See you next time! If you were forwarded this email, and want to subscribe, hit the button below.

1. I’m being ironic. Please don’t write in. But seriously: what do Gen Z boys listen to? I found one a few weeks ago, but he only listened to Dire Straits.